Council? Actually, Baine is the unofficial Warchief

[Powerogue]

Yeah yeah that's why I added the bit at the end, Baine has his history of derps. (even if I still maintain this expansion was probably him at his highest, relatively speaking, because his optimistic ideals actually worked out)

I was going to propose a different set of lines but honestly digging through the PTR lines instead of the MMO-champ summary I think they're fine. It doesn't say that Baine forgot about that stuff.

Baine Bloodhoof: Kiro. I must apologize for so hastly dismissing you earlier.
Baine Bloodhoof: The Horde endures because we band together in times of adversity.
Baine Bloodhoof: Though I turned you away, you selflessly came to our aid. Just as you did in Vol'dun.
Baine Bloodhoof: Such is the true spirit of the Horde. If you still desire to join us, you would be most welcome within our ranks.
Kiro: It would be our honor, High Chieftain.
Baine Bloodhoof: Then it is decided. From this day forth, the vulpera of vol'dun are allies of the Horde!

[Friendlyimmolation]

Yeah yeah that's why I added the bit at the end, Baine has his history of derps. (even if I still maintain this expansion was probably him at his highest, relatively speaking, because his optimistic ideals actually worked out)

I was going to propose a different set of lines but honestly digging through the PTR lines instead of the MMO-champ summary I think they're fine. It doesn't say that Baine forgot about that stuff.

Baine Bloodhoof: Kiro. I must apologize for so hastly dismissing you earlier.
Baine Bloodhoof: The Horde endures because we band together in times of adversity.
Baine Bloodhoof: Though I turned you away, you selflessly came to our aid. Just as you did in Vol'dun.
Baine Bloodhoof: Such is the true spirit of the Horde. If you still desire to join us, you would be most welcome within our ranks.
Kiro: It would be our honor, High Chieftain.
Baine Bloodhoof: Then it is decided. From this day forth, the vulpera of vol'dun are allies of the Horde!

Yea he doesn’t outright say the words he forgot but he does say “oops I kinda outright forgot about how the Horde is all about races banding together.”

[Feanoro]

Yeah yeah that's why I added the bit at the end, Baine has his history of derps. (even if I still maintain this expansion was probably him at his highest, relatively speaking, because his optimistic ideals actually worked out)

I was going to propose a different set of lines but honestly digging through the PTR lines instead of the MMO-champ summary I think they're fine. It doesn't say that Baine forgot about that stuff.

Baine Bloodhoof: Kiro. I must apologize for so hastly dismissing you earlier.
Baine Bloodhoof: The Horde endures because we band together in times of adversity.
Baine Bloodhoof: Though I turned you away, you selflessly came to our aid. Just as you did in Vol'dun.
Baine Bloodhoof: Such is the true spirit of the Horde. If you still desire to join us, you would be most welcome within our ranks.
Kiro: It would be our honor, High Chieftain.
Baine Bloodhoof: Then it is decided. From this day forth, the vulpera of vol'dun are allies of the Horde!

Nonsense, Baine, that's the true spirit of the Horde you only imagine exists. The true spirit of the Horde that exists is to follow any bloodthirsty idiot who yells "For the Horde" into the meat grinder, massacre anything that moves, toss in an atrocity or two for flavor, then claim it was all That One Mean Guy who MADE us do it.

[Powerogue]

Nonsense, Baine, that's the true spirit of the Horde you only imagine exists. The true spirit of the Horde that exists is to follow any bloodthirsty idiot who yells "For the Horde" into the meat grinder, massacre anything that moves, toss in an atrocity or two for flavor, then claim it was all That One Mean Guy who MADE us do it.

I mean him, Thrall, and pretty much everyone else who isn't in chains right now. By destroying the warchief position and the Blood Oath with it, here's to hoping it finally sticks this time.

[Syegfryed]

Gotta love blizz council's they are pretty much nonexistent and only one person ever actually does something, until it is necessary that the council has to disagree with them, the prime example would be the council of the six, it took until legion until you at least saw the other members.

It seems blizz intends to pull pretty much the same crap here, they just don't commit. Either you do a council properly, or not at all.

im pretty sure Baine will be the unnoficial warchief doing all the things, until he go evil like the others, and the council with anduin put him as the janitor.

- - - Updated - - -

Did you not even read the quest text? It provides plenty of context for WHY he made the decision initially.
@Powerogue summarized it well though.

he should not make the decision tough, thats the point, he should say, "we are not denying or allowing right now because we are busy, wait when we are free and the council is available."

not denying in any account.

[Feanoro]

I mean him, Thrall, and pretty much everyone else who isn't in chains right now. By destroying the warchief position and the Blood Oath with it, here's to hoping it finally sticks this time.

Eh, let's see if we even make it to 10.0 before the Horde goes apeshit again.

[Super Dickmann]

Doesn't really matter, IMO. Sylvanas' loyalists protected Derek with their lives against Baine and the Champion who were there to free him, do you really think even more loyalists wouldn't lay down their lives to protect Sylvanas from a rampaging and vengeful Jaina? You don't think Jaina is willing and able to go off half-cocked? As for changing Jaina's mind, I would seriously ponder whether you and I watched the same cut-scene in the game. Jaina's initial demeanor with Baine is understandably taciturn and gruff, mounting into a rage when she sees what has been done to Derek, culminating in her outright accusing Baine of another Theramore-level betrayal of her person. Only the knowledge that Baine saved Derek from that fate (from Derek's own lips), at great risk to himself, finally defuses Jaina and starts her down the path of questioning her own actions and former convictions, as well as making her later work with the Horde forces in Nazjatar possible. If you maintain that Baine didn't "seriously affect" Jaina's mindset I would say you're being willfully blind to what the narrative is conveying in this context. Baine also served as something of a lightning rod for the Horde rebellion against Sylvanas, being the factor that got Saurfang and Thrall together in arms, and as depicted in the close of the leader summit in 8.2 was more than a minor factor for many of the Horde leaders' own discontent and questions. I wouldn't give Baine sole credit for this, but trying to strip him of any credit is misguided in my view.

You also can't really bring up the revealed info in Shadowlands without the continuing reminder that Sylvanas' goal was to feed *everyone* to the Maw. The Alliance, the Horde, the Champion themselves, etc. etc. In that light, there's really no need to reiterate that while everyone else has a neat tally of souls condemned to WoW's version of hell, there's really only one practitioner of knowing omnicide.

Jaina was pissed because she was in Theramore and Baine had just produced her undead brother. The second a single word comes out of Derek's mouth, she immediately calms back down. Prior to this, she had A) - already agreed to the meeting in the first place, B) - already accepted Anduin's war goal of only and exclusively ditching Sylvanas, C) - was willing to throw away victory in the war and the saving of lives in the long run for the sake of maintaining the highest possible moral highground by not attacking the Zandalari and winning. This is in no way the start of her reverting to her WC3 self, that's already happened within the 8.0 and 8.1 Jaina story, culminating, by the writers' own admission, in the scene where she saves Kul Tiras without firing a shot when she brings the fleet home, reclaiming her legacy without becoming like her dad (to the great loss of the narrative and the logic of all kul tirans). Jaina and Anduin already knew that Baine was their buddy and they already knew that Saurfang was on their side, he provides them with no new information. As for your last point that everyone is going to hell, I don't really see your point there, obviously everyone's going to go to hell, that's why when Baine kills more people than would have died otherwise and when his total contribution still ends up with a far smaller army than Sylvanas's facing the gates, we can say that he ended up advancing her goal of mass death without contributing to her overthrow and ergo was wrong even retroactively to intervene.

Baine isn't close - he's within the inner bailey of Capitol City, behind the walls, while Sylvanas' actions occur outside of the city's walls. Unless Baine can literally see through walls he wouldn't be privy to what had happened. No doubt he learned later, of course, but at the time they were all fighting for their lives so it wasn't really the time or place for further disunity. It's just another of Sylvanas' transgressions he's no doubt filed away. Saurfang is the one exhorting the surviving Horde soldiers to rescue the wounded, and the primary witness to the events. Derek is also a much more significant step than the raising of the Horde dead as mindless skeletons - not that Baine doesn't care about that, but the very idea of corrupting the ideal of the Forsaken in the name of creating an enslaved undead bomb for the Proudmoores is a pretty huge step in light of Sylvanas' previous proclamations about her own people. One of these travesties occurred in the midst of a pitched battle between the Horde and Alliance, and the other was a coldly premeditated act forged from the very perversion of of the Forsaken themselves. That's not the same thing at all, and so it's not treated the same, either. Even Lilian Voss finds Sylvanas' actions vis-a-vis Derek to be reprehensible.

Baine has far more in common with - and owes far more to, the tauren who get raised, than he does to this enemy nobody, yet one of these actions he goes on about the horror of endlessly and the other doesn't even gather so much as a huff. Slavery is a routine Horde practice, mind control - through banshees, is a routine Forsaken practice, the use of undead slaves - ergo, ghouls is a routine Sylvanas practice. The way the narrative treats it is absolutely ridiculous, and the moral framing it presents is one that is unconscionable, to accept it one would have to also accept several fundamentally farcical positions. That one enemy is worse more than tons of allies as objects of the act, that the act of slavery and mind control is materially worse when done to the Forsaken than to anyone else, despite Derek only being Forsaken by name and being raised from start to finish to serve and die, and the living being treated much worse, and that any kind of mind control, slavery or torture is somehow a higher form of deprivation of will than death, which prevents the taking of all future decisions, and in turn justifies the killing of those on your own side to benefit said enemy in war time.

[Trbn]

the moment golden is fired will be the best day for wow story

[Raisei]

Oh, it's very morally unsound, but in terms of it being a fundamental violation of the Horde's values that was never done before, that's simply false - the Forsaken state was founded upon having banshees possess people to make them die for the cause. At every instance in its existence, the Horde has practiced chattel slavery or gladiatorial slavery, the latter upon actual allied races. Further, even if it was, the end goal of this incredibly retarded plan was to assassinate someone who'd ensured the Horde's defeat at two cities at relatively little cost. To kill your own side in order to enable his release, murdering more people in the process and once again, depriving them of any opportunity to express any free will to speak of as they'll be dead and thus unable to take decisions, is unjustified.

Yes, exactly, it's the means of the Forsaken, but hardly of the Horde in total. That is the problem Baine has and many of the other leaders should have that problem too if they are allied to things like the Light and Nature. The Forsaken's way of warfare is quite frankly the way of a group of terrorists trying to bring down larger states. They use biological and chemical weapons to kill civilian targets or stage what is basically suicide attacks with brain-washed innocents. Their way of warfare is in a word "dirty". This was less of a problem when the Forsaken were just one group among the Horde. Sylvanas could do her shit behind the scenes and because she is an elf in a bikini few people objected too much, but it should tell you a lot if even a warcriminal like Garrosh tells her to stop and consider her methods.

Baines problem started when Sylvanas took over the Warchief position and she started to use the entire Horde to wage this kind of war on a much larger scale (less so in Legion, because the enemies were evil demons and they do not actually have civilians for Sylvanas to murder).
The Horde is a warmongering club, so much even Baine knew and for people like him and Saurfang war is not inherently an evil act, it's a means for survival and to test your strength (a notion Sylvanas exploited when she explained the need for war to Saurfang), they do very much believe in the idea of "a good war".
So he did not object to the war as it was, but when Sylvanas turned more and more from "good war" to "Forsaken war", he simply could not go along anymore not because he is a lackey of the Alliance, but because he felt that Sylvanas "everything goes" - tactics poisoned the very ideals of the Horde that he had.

Saving Derek had only very little to do with him personally or even Jaina, it was about saving the Horde's face as he believed it should be. At that point winning the war simply took a backseat behind the means of winning the war. And this was not a process that started and ended with Derek. It started as early as Lordaeron, where indeed Baine had to watch helplessly as Sylvanas deployed the Blight on her own troops and raised the dead as her slaves. He did not voice his discontent there, but he sure as hell does in the later scene in the throne room (with Saurfang being sacrificed as the spark for more discontent), but he realized that he could not do anything at that point. Sylvanas did not care about his complaints and threatened him into obedience. He was rightfully worried about the Tauren if he pushed the matter at that point.
These things acumulated and he kept weighing the safety of his people against his own feelings over the matter. When the Derek thing happened, he finally felt that it was too much AND that he had a way to do something. He expressly says that at that point the safety of his people cannot outweigh the things he is forced to do under the Banshee's orders:

Jaina: "... and she might not stop with you."
Baine: "No live is worth living, if you cannot be true to your nature."

He took the risk of loosing his life and his people because there was no way they could continue living as part of this kind of Horde, death was preferable. He is not making that decision lightly or quickly and he certainly isn't doing it because he is Anduin's lackey.

WoW has no war crimes provisions except in the form of a show trial where guilt was pre-assumed and those on trial knew that no verdict would be rendered and that the accusing parties were actually the ones being tested. Even if they did, I simply dismiss the notion outright that mind control/torture is somehow morally inferior to simply being dead. Any fate outside of death offers the opportunity of recovery. Being dead is the ultimate cost. Killing your own side in a war while reacting in no way at all to your own race's dead being defiled is pathetic and alone should've secured Baine a place on a branch. Doing so to benefit the enemy in a total war just seals the deal. Sylvanas's overall goals are comically evil, so much is true, but that does not render her opponents somehow morally infallible - they were wrong within the context of what they did, and Baine in particular is wrong even retroactively, because as said, he sent more people to hell in the process of his act.

And yet, despite it being a mock trial, "Warcrimes" very clearly shows that all the leaders of both Horde and Alliance have an understanding about how a war is fought "the right way" and what is acceptable and what is not during war.
Nuking Theramore was not acceptable. Murdering civilians in general is not acceptable. Teldrassil is therefore not acceptable. Torturing a certain Dragon Mama into cooperation is not acceptable. Torturing a man to murder his family is therefore not acceptable. None in the combined leadership argue these points. There might not be a codified law for warcrimes, but there sure as hell is an understanding for what warcrimes are.
That the Forsaken and Sylvanas in the shadows do ignore this because they feel that they are not bound by the laws of the living does not mean the Horde thinks so as a whole, it simply means that the Forsaken never aspired to become true members of the Horde and should have been wiped out years ago.

And I have to disagree. Torture can quite easily be apllied in such a horrific ways that people literally beg for death before they have to endure more. I mean the early modern witch trials were a very clear show of this. People confessed in droves knowing that they would be burned alive, because the alternative was more torture.
Killing people that helped Sylvanas with her horrendous acts was simply logical and he even let those that were running away go, knowing that they would rat him out.

I also have to agree with @Aucald. If the plan had gone off and if for example Kathrin had died by Derek's hand, you could bet that the death toll on the Horde side would have skyrocketed. Jaina's scene in front of Theramore "Is he the bomb now?" makes my skin crawl (it is so incredibly well done and well voiced), it clearly shows that such a personal attack on her is a REALLY bad idea. This time Orgrimmar would have been destroyed, you can bet on that.

[Dagoth Ur]

Yea he doesn’t outright say the words he forgot but he does say “oops I kinda outright forgot about how the Horde is all about races banding together.”

Tfw Heart of the Horde forgets what the Horde is actually about.

You know, I think stupid good would actually be more digestible than "wise beyond his years" good they've been pushing for Our Treasure and the Heart of the Horde. Having moron as not-really-warchief-but-actually-warchief would be pretty hilarious.

[Super Dickmann]

Yes, exactly, it's the means of the Forsaken, but hardly of the Horde in total. That is the problem Baine has and many of the other leaders should have that problem too if they are allied to things like the Light and Nature. The Forsaken's way of warfare is quite frankly the way of a group of terrorists trying to bring down larger states. They use biological and chemical weapons to kill civilian targets or stage what is basically suicide attacks with brain-washed innocents. Their way of warfare is in a word "dirty". This was less of a problem when the Forsaken were just one group among the Horde. Sylvanas could do her shit behind the scenes and because she is an elf in a bikini few people objected too much, but it should tell you a lot if even a warcriminal like Garrosh tells her to stop and consider her methods.

You are fundamentally wrong in your notion that the Forsaken are somehow alien to what the Horde already practiced, it's why I immediately brought up that the Horde had practiced slavery from Day 1 and while the Forsaken dabbled in it, the ones who practiced it the most are the orcs, from the First War on. Chattel slavery under Garrosh and the Old Horde, gladiatorial slavery where you net random people and force them to fight to the death in arenas under Thrall, the former on anyone who opposed the Horde, the latter on anyone period, including allied races.

Your assertions about Baine starting his defiance at Lordaeron based on the deaths and raising of the tauren is completely baseless fanfiction. It'd be nice if it were true, but the narrative presents nothing in that vein. He has never even referenced this happening at any time, and we know how Baine acts when something genuinely offends his comical values - he goes behind the backs of the present leadership to bolster the other side. See tipping Jaina off about the attack on Theramore and bailing Derek out. We know how he reacts to things that mildly rankle him, like leaving Saurfang behind, even though Saurfang chose to stay behind - he objects vocally. He has not once brought up Teldrassil, he has not once brought up the raising of his people - these things registered below both Derek and the thing. The treatment of Derek's fate as uniquely abhorrent or alien is a joke in a society that practices mind control, slavery, and in the case of the Mag'har, the consumption of the souls of the dead to consign them to a hell equivalent to the Maw, namely the Void. Yet Baine reacted to none of these - only to when Jaina's family is threatened. His disregard for his people as anything but an abstraction that should share his masochistic viewpoints is a well established character trait, given that he previously tipped Jaina off after Theramore was the main invading party of the Barrens and Mulgore, and even his fellow rebels, in a brief moment of lucidity have Lor'themar point out that he acted retardedly and put his people at risk to bail Derek out.

What Baine says does not render what he's saying somehow correct or worthwhile. A leader who places abstractions and the wellbeing of an enemy prisoner at the expense of the war effort and far more importantly the suffering of his own race is manifestly unfit for his position and given how Baine chooses to go about it, should earn him a quick trip to the chair. Not only is he demonstrably wrong about the nature of the Horde, but even if he were 100% right it would only put his actions in a far worse light because he'd treat this breach far more harshly than the much larger exceptional breaches like Teldrassil or Lordaeron, and the routine breaches that have been an element of the Horde's conduct since inception.

And yet, despite it being a mock trial, "Warcrimes" very clearly shows that all the leaders of both Horde and Alliance have an understanding about how a war is fought "the right way" and what is acceptable and what is not during war.
Nuking Theramore was not acceptable. Murdering civilians in general is not acceptable. Teldrassil is therefore not acceptable. Torturing a certain Dragon Mama into cooperation is not acceptable. Torturing a man to murder his family is therefore not acceptable. None in the combined leadership argue these points. There might not be a codified law for warcrimes, but there sure as hell is an understanding for what warcrimes are.
That the Forsaken and Sylvanas in the shadows do ignore this because they feel that they are not bound by the laws of the living does not mean the Horde thinks so as a whole, it simply means that the Forsaken never aspired to become true members of the Horde and should have been wiped out years ago.

No, they most definitely don't. That was the whole point of the book, in fact, the Celestials put the accusers in the moral hot seat for their hypocrisy and tested them accordingly, while the actual trial was a sham who's outcome was predetermined. It's never brought up before or since and no race practices it, nor agrees on its use. Case in point, Sylvanas was one of the participating parties, so was Jaina, the dwarves and the extended orcs, of which no one but Garrosh was judged. That you attribute this to the Forsaken exclusively shows both your bias and your unfamiliarity with what's actually gone on. The Forsaken are the most evil race, but they are by no means the sole ones to not follow the arbitrary rules decided by the pandas, see the dwarves with the Stonespire, the orcs with the aforementioned slavery, both Jaina and orcs in firebombing places with civilians and so on. Neither the Horde nor the orcs have ever been some whitewashed collective who've maintained the code Saurfang projects upon them. That is indeed the whole point of his realization at the tower while talking with Anduin in 8.2.5 and it's why his force is much smaller than Sylvanas until she bails out. Saurfang is their idealized self-image, Sylvanas's public face as a conqueror rather than her real self as the architect of a separate, presumably omnicidal plan is what they truly have been.

When it comes to torture, especially in a fictional setting where magical healing is available, it is finite. Death is final. When you die, that's it. There's nothing left for you to go forward, nor any possibility of recovery, however slim. Death can be preferable in a narrative sense or heroic, of course, but that doesn't make killing someone any less the biggest deal you can inflict upon someone, barring again, fantastical stuff like sending them to hell, which is incidentally what also happened to these Forsaken. Derek's life has no more value than that of the crewmembers, in fact, given that the crewmembers are on his side of a total war, whereas Derek isn't, their lives both numerically and allegiance-wise have higher value contextually, and their fate is final, whereas his isn't. The idea that because they disagree with Baine's comical values, he has the moral authority, or per your post, the moral obligation to kill them would extend such a mandate to killing the shamans at the catapults at Teldrassil, the warriors at Brennadam, the trolls using night elves for target practice, every banshee and every slaver, etc, etc. Derek's fate as some kind of uniquely morally abhorrent act, somehow more worthy of opposition than the raising of his own people's dead into undead fodder is simply the most demonstrably false in this entire line of situations, all of which are either equivalent or worse and only a fraction of which involve Forsaken.

Re: The last point, I emphatically disagree. The Alliance are a faction of limpdicked appeasers who forgave genocide in which the Horde army as a whole, not just Sylvanas is culpable and a population that in their vast majority not only prosecuted the war in a 'dishonorable' fashion but only switched sides because Sylvanas flew off and called them some mean names. They'll forgive the deaths of 1-3 people in a likely doomed plan that was actually exclusively set into motion by Sylvanas and some dark rangers, especially after Jaina had already committed to a plan that had them purposefully not win the war and avoid further bloodshed to take a moral highground and had agreed with the "Remove Sylvanas, keep everyone else" warplan. Does it make sense if any of them were remotely normal human beings? No. But that's how they're presented.

[Reinhart11]

Baines decision in regards to the Vulpera was downright stupid. So the Horde is stretched thin and needs more manpower. Here come people who offer their help and don't ask for anything in return, just to be allowed to join the Horde.

Obviously Baine in his ingenuity decides to turn down this offer, not even testing the strength and skills of the Vulpera, and rather prefers the problems he can't solve stay unsolved. The incompetence is mindboggling here, although i like to think that that Maghar Orc is just trolling Baine for the lulz.

It also shows that Baine only sit on his lazy ass while he was in Zandalar and probably barely left the pyramid, learning nothing about most of the people living there. He had no time for such unimportant things, as he had to worry every second about the well being of Anduin, Jaina and the Alliance. But at least he is well qualified and experienced in sitting around, doing nothing. Because that literally the only thing this sorry excuse does when he is in Thunder Bluff.

Aside from that, these quests are just shameful for the Horde. It shows the Zandalari can't handle a little Naga "invasion", that is solved by one hero and a Vulpera. It shows the Nightborne are apparently too retarded to create their own wine now. And the Orcs all of a sudden have no idea how to handle their peons(although i liked this quest the most) to built one little outpost. If i were a Vulpera and see that amount of incompetence residing in Grommash Hold, i would turn right around and get the fuck out of there before Baine sees me and infects me with his non existing wisdom. These quests make no sense anyway. They show that the Horde is incapable of solving some of the most basic tasks of a functioning nation / people, especially in regards of defending and building(wine isn't that important). Which makes no sense, because in this case the Horde would collapse faster than someone could say "oh shit". And in regards to Baine, its no surpise anyway that Baines behaviour and especially his "wisdom" is worthless. Because you need a writer that possesses wisdom herself/himself to portray such a character. Which Blizzard is clearly lacking.

[Raisei]

You are fundamentally wrong in your notion that the Forsaken are somehow alien to what the Horde already practiced, it's why I immediately brought up that the Horde had practiced slavery from Day 1 and while the Forsaken dabbled in it, the ones who practiced it the most are the orcs, from the First War on. Chattel slavery under Garrosh and the Old Horde, gladiatorial slavery where you net random people and force them to fight to the death in arenas under Thrall, the former on anyone who opposed the Horde, the latter on anyone period, including allied races.

Yes, but as I already pointed out Slavery and the Derek-Plan are on very very different levels. The Romans, Greeks and Egyptians all practiced slavery, yet we consider them them the progenitors of our civilisation(s). It surely isn't a good thing that the Horde keeps this practice up, but it is a lot less disgusting then Sylvanas plan.

Your assertions about Baine starting his defiance at Lordaeron based on the deaths and raising of the tauren is completely baseless fanfiction. It'd be nice if it were true, but the narrative presents nothing in that vein. He has never even referenced this happening at any time, and we know how Baine acts when something genuinely offends his comical values - he goes behind the backs of the present leadership to bolster the other side. See tipping Jaina off about the attack on Theramore and bailing Derek out. We know how he reacts to things that mildly rankle him, like leaving Saurfang behind, even though Saurfang chose to stay behind - he objects vocally. He has not once brought up Teldrassil, he has not once brought up the raising of his people - these things registered below both Derek and the thing. The treatment of Derek's fate as uniquely abhorrent or alien is a joke in a society that practices mind control, slavery, and in the case of the Mag'har, the consumption of the souls of the dead to consign them to a hell equivalent to the Maw, namely the Void. Yet Baine reacted to none of these - only to when Jaina's family is threatened. His disregard for his people as anything but an abstraction that should share his masochistic viewpoints is a well established character trait, given that he previously tipped Jaina off after Theramore was the main invading party of the Barrens and Mulgore, and even his fellow rebels, in a brief moment of lucidity have Lor'themar point out that he acted retardedly and put his people at risk to bail Derek out.

I have in various posts pointed out why Baine always HAS to go behind his genocidal psychopath ruler's back, it is the intrinsical problem of the Horde's blood oath to their Warchief. Baine has exactly 2 choices: Do what Sylvanas wants or become a traitor.
Considering the Power Level Sylvanas seems to be at (which apparently everyone knows already when Saurfang challenges her) Mak'gorah is in no way a reasonable option unless Baine wanted to commit suicide, which he likely even did after freeing Derek (and it is very likely for dramatic reasons that he did at that meeting not challenge her, Blizz wanted it to be unique for Saurfang)
There simply is no "open" way to prevent things that your Warchief wants to do. You can technically not even argue with them because acording to the wording you are just a weapon for the Warchief to wield, a weapon does not talk back.
So tell me, if not for clandestine actions, what other way did he have to go against her plan?

What Baine says does not render what he's saying somehow correct or worthwhile. A leader who places abstractions and the wellbeing of an enemy prisoner at the expense of the war effort and far more importantly the suffering of his own race is manifestly unfit for his position and given how Baine chooses to go about it, should earn him a quick trip to the chair. Not only is he demonstrably wrong about the nature of the Horde, but even if he were 100% right it would only put his actions in a far worse light because he'd treat this breach far more harshly than the much larger exceptional breaches like Teldrassil or Lordaeron, and the routine breaches that have been an element of the Horde's conduct since inception.

For people like the Orcs, Trolls and Tauren a thing like honor is not just an abstract value, it is the thing that decides if they lived a worthy life, if anything they did meant something and for warriors it is even factually the mark that decides if you get back into the Halls of Valor to drink beer with Odyn for all eternity (not very abstract if you have been there already). It is at most the Forsaken and Goblins that scoff at honor (the latter only because you can't get it valued in gold, even if they surely tried). Seeing the Horde loose it's honor because of Sylvanas is for such a mindset the same as seeing the faction destroyed. Hence why Baine's actions are absolutely for the Horde (his ideal Horde) to survive. Derek profits from this of course, but he is not the driving factor.

But of course you are right that Saurfang does realize that the Horde has very little honor to begin with (Baine not being present we do not know if he would agree or disagree), the point of the cinematic however is that they are making a (lasting) change to actually become an honorable Horde now, one that coexists with it's Alliance neighbours. Not because Varian threatened them into it, but because they realize that this cycle of faction war is only hurting themselves.

No, they most definitely don't. That was the whole point of the book, in fact, the Celestials put the accusers in the moral hot seat for their hypocrisy and tested them accordingly, while the actual trial was a sham who's outcome was predetermined. It's never brought up before or since and no race practices it, nor agrees on its use. Case in point, Sylvanas was one of the participating parties, so was Jaina, the dwarves and the extended orcs, of which no one but Garrosh was judged. That you attribute this to the Forsaken exclusively shows both your bias and your unfamiliarity with what's actually gone on. The Forsaken are the most evil race, but they are by no means the sole ones to not follow the arbitrary rules decided by the pandas, see the dwarves with the Stonespire, the orcs with the aforementioned slavery, both Jaina and orcs in firebombing places with civilians and so on. Neither the Horde nor the orcs have ever been some whitewashed collective who've maintained the code Saurfang projects upon them. That is indeed the whole point of his realization at the tower while talking with Anduin in 8.2.5 and it's why his force is much smaller than Sylvanas until she bails out. Saurfang is their idealized self-image, Sylvanas's public face as a conqueror rather than her real self as the architect of a separate, presumably omnicidal plan is what they truly have been.

And yet, during his questioning by Tyrande, Varian clearly reveals that he is not a genocidal madman and the entire crowd is shocked by Tyrande even asking that, showing that there are things everyone agrees are not acceptable. Genocide being one. Despite the goals of the Celestials the mindset of the present leaders and their opinions about the crimes of Garrosh are pretty clearly stated. The only one that doesn't care about any of this is - surprise - Sylvanas, who wants to kill Garrosh purely because she didn't like him and the way he talked to her.

She was a participant only so she could secretly murder Garrosh (or rather let Vareesa murder him for her) behind her Warchiefs back. You give Baine a lot of flak for his saving Derek behind her back, but if Sylvanas does this stuff herself (while completely disregarding collateral damage mind you, she would have poisoned everyone present Horde or Alliance if necessary) it doesn't seem to count. And it is hardly the first time she subverted her Warchiefs orders to do what she wanted.
Jaina on the other hand had actually made her peace with the Horde at that point and buried her genocidal side and contrary to Garrosh and Sylvanas she actually realized how wrong genocide is and is immensely glad she was stopped.

And well, yes, I am biased against the Forsaken, and considering you keep telling me how evil they are and that BtS does not actually portray them correctly (as in evil enough), I am not sure how I could not be. They are evil undead monsters apparently, worse then the Scourge because they actively DECIDE to be evil with their free will. To paraphrase Vision: I am on the side of life, they are not.

When it comes to torture, especially in a fictional setting where magical healing is available, it is finite. Death is final. When you die, that's it. There's nothing left for you to go forward, nor any possibility of recovery, however slim. Death can be preferable in a narrative sense or heroic, of course, but that doesn't make killing someone any less the biggest deal you can inflict upon someone, barring again, fantastical stuff like sending them to hell, which is incidentally what also happened to these Forsaken. Derek's life has no more value than that of the crewmembers, in fact, given that the crewmembers are on his side of a total war, whereas Derek isn't, their lives both numerically and allegiance-wise have higher value contextually, and their fate is final, whereas his isn't. The idea that because they disagree with Baine's comical values, he has the moral authority, or per your post, the moral obligation to kill them would extend such a mandate to killing the shamans at the catapults at Teldrassil, the warriors at Brennadam, the trolls using night elves for target practice, every banshee and every slaver, etc, etc. Derek's fate as some kind of uniquely morally abhorrent act, somehow more worthy of opposition than the raising of his own people's dead into undead fodder is simply the most demonstrably false in this entire line of situations, all of which are either equivalent or worse and only a fraction of which involve Forsaken.

Re: The last point, I emphatically disagree. The Alliance are a faction of limpdicked appeasers who forgave genocide in which the Horde army as a whole, not just Sylvanas is culpable and a population that in their vast majority not only prosecuted the war in a 'dishonorable' fashion but only switched sides because Sylvanas flew off and called them some mean names. They'll forgive the deaths of 1-3 people in a likely doomed plan that was actually exclusively set into motion by Sylvanas and some dark rangers, especially after Jaina had already committed to a plan that had them purposefully not win the war and avoid further bloodshed to take a moral highground and had agreed with the "Remove Sylvanas, keep everyone else" warplan. Does it make sense if any of them were remotely normal human beings? No. But that's how they're presented.

If we are talking about a world with magic, especially with necromancy, then death is a very complicated state. Are people that get battlerezzed by a Death Knight still alive or undead? Are undead actually not alive if they walk around and talk? Is death even a final thing when you go to the Shadowlands and exist there fully concious?

You can disagree on Jaina's willingness to wipe out Orgrimmar and you'd be wrong. Anduin is another case of course. He would try to stop her, but I doubt he would have the same success as Thrall and Kalec, not a second time. She decided during Garrosh's trial that she wanted to not be like him, but she is still just a step away from going fully murderous again. She almost vaporized Baine where he stood when she saw what had been done to Derek, had she stumbled upon Derek that has just killed Kathrin she would have lost it completely. Her resolve is not that strong and her sanity by now is more then a bit fragile.

[Aucald]

Jaina was pissed because she was in Theramore and Baine had just produced her undead brother. The second a single word comes out of Derek's mouth, she immediately calms back down. Prior to this, she had A) - already agreed to the meeting in the first place, B) - already accepted Anduin's war goal of only and exclusively ditching Sylvanas, C) - was willing to throw away victory in the war and the saving of lives in the long run for the sake of maintaining the highest possible moral highground by not attacking the Zandalari and winning. This is in no way the start of her reverting to her WC3 self, that's already happened within the 8.0 and 8.1 Jaina story, culminating, by the writers' own admission, in the scene where she saves Kul Tiras without firing a shot when she brings the fleet home, reclaiming her legacy without becoming like her dad (to the great loss of the narrative and the logic of all kul tirans). Jaina and Anduin already knew that Baine was their buddy and they already knew that Saurfang was on their side, he provides them with no new information. As for your last point that everyone is going to hell, I don't really see your point there, obviously everyone's going to go to hell, that's why when Baine kills more people than would have died otherwise and when his total contribution still ends up with a far smaller army than Sylvanas's facing the gates, we can say that he ended up advancing her goal of mass death without contributing to her overthrow and ergo was wrong even retroactively to intervene.

Yes, you've detailed the events of what happened succinctly enough, but avoided entirely the likely outcome of Derek actually becoming the weapon Sylvanas intended and killing members of her family (or really anyone in Kul Tiras). Unless Derek killed Jaina, which you've already admitted was very unlikely, Jaina is going to snap in a vengeful fit that would result in the deaths of a *lot* of Horde soldiers by the time all is said and done. Far more than Baine regretfully killed freeing Derek from his imprisonment. Since we were talking about the unfortunate circumstances of death in WoW as concerns the Maw, that would be a lot more possible dead consigned to WoW hell than Baine achieved doing what he felt he had to do. That's a bit of an aside, though; as no one currently knows about the Maw and the state of death besides Sylvanas herself (who, in my view, rightfully shares blame in *all* the dead of the War of Blood - whether she directly killed them or not).

Baine has far more in common with - and owes far more to, the tauren who get raised, than he does to this enemy nobody, yet one of these actions he goes on about the horror of endlessly and the other doesn't even gather so much as a huff. Slavery is a routine Horde practice, mind control - through banshees, is a routine Forsaken practice, the use of undead slaves - ergo, ghouls is a routine Sylvanas practice. The way the narrative treats it is absolutely ridiculous, and the moral framing it presents is one that is unconscionable, to accept it one would have to also accept several fundamentally farcical positions. That one enemy is worse more than tons of allies as objects of the act, that the act of slavery and mind control is materially worse when done to the Forsaken than to anyone else, despite Derek only being Forsaken by name and being raised from start to finish to serve and die, and the living being treated much worse, and that any kind of mind control, slavery or torture is somehow a higher form of deprivation of will than death, which prevents the taking of all future decisions, and in turn justifies the killing of those on your own side to benefit said enemy in war time.

Inter arma enim silent leges, or "in times of war, the laws fall mute" as Cicero put it. Baine no doubt rankles at the idea of the Horde dead, including his own people, being raised as skeletons by Sylvanas to fight the Alliance - but he's got a number of factors working against him. Firstly and most immediately, they're literally under attack in the heart of their own fortress, a dire situation that does call for extreme measures. Sylvanas' measures not being ideal, but if they're working it's not like he can lodge a formal complaint in the heat of battle. Secondly, Baine is already on Sylvanas' radar in a bad way due to the events of "Before the Storm," so he already needs to tread carefully in light of Sylvanas' implied threat to both him and his people. Thirdly, Baine is keen to preserve is position high in the Horde so as to work to correct the problems from within - he's not going to throw that away lightly, and (rightfully) judges that this is not the time to do that on moral grounds. One thing Baine struggles with as a leader is in the different between ruling with his head and his heart, as it were; and in this case I think he made a good decision to hold back as much as he could, bide his time and wait for the right time to act. You upbraid him for this, just as you do when he act rashly as concerns Taurajo and those he exiled (a decision I also think was foolhardy on his part) - but I think that's a bit hypocritical and probably more a product of your extreme dislike for his character. In your eyes I don't he can do anything good or right at this part. But regardless, I think he was right in this case, and right again to defy Sylvanas and free Derek from bondage and address the corruption of the Forsaken credo itself. I also think the idea of outing Sylvanas to the Horde was a strong part of Baine's actions as well, they didn't all arise from pure and utter altruism - he wanted people to see Sylvanas for what she was, and for many people he got his wish. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, either; as we know now that he was completely right about her, and well vindicated in his beliefs that she was bad for Horde (and bad for all life, as it turned out).

[Super Dickmann]

Yes, but as I already pointed out Slavery and the Derek-Plan are on very very different levels. The Romans, Greeks and Egyptians all practiced slavery, yet we consider them them the progenitors of our civilisation(s). It surely isn't a good thing that the Horde keeps this practice up, but it is a lot less disgusting then Sylvanas plan.

There is indeed different kinds of slavery, which are variously morally abhorrent. Personally, I find poaching randos from your component nations to pit them in death matches for entertainment rather than for any functional purpose is the most detestable, because its slavery as a social structure rather than slavery as a temporary tool, but I can understand the arguments contrary to it. Put simply, Derek being tortured into slavery to then become an assassin I find only marginally worse than being mind controlled, and leagues preferable to say, the genocide of a city's worth of civilians, the raising of far more people as mind controlled slaves that are from your component nations, or the sending of their souls to hell. Derek does not rank even above the routine practices of the Horde, let alone the routine practices of its darkest component, being the Forsaken.

There simply is no "open" way to prevent things that your Warchief wants to do. You can technically not even argue with them because acording to the wording you are just a weapon for the Warchief to wield, a weapon does not talk back.
So tell me, if not for clandestine actions, what other way did he have to go against her plan?

You misunderstand the portion of that argument, but I'll address it anyway since the way this story ended is the ultimate demonstration that this could always have been solved within the Horde. The rebel+Alliance forces were set to lose, all of Baine's bullshit and Bob and Jaina joining sides to end up helping free N'zoth and so on were completely irrelevant. What took out Sylvanas was Mak'gora, and Baine should've done what Saurfang did if he had any issue with her and what his dad did when he had a much lesser issue with Garrosh. The greater point of my argument however isn't that he went behind her back, though that is a show of his weakness, but that the thing he did ultimately subvert her for was less than many of the things he's had zero response to and that he stuck with her through.

For people like the Orcs, Trolls and Tauren a thing like honor is not just an abstract value, it is the thing that decides if they lived a worthy life, if anything they did meant something and for warriors it is even factually the mark that decides if you get back into the Halls of Valor to drink beer with Odyn for all eternity (not very abstract if you have been there already). It is at most the Forsaken and Goblins that scoff at honor (the latter only because you can't get it valued in gold, even if they surely tried). Seeing the Horde loose it's honor because of Sylvanas is for such a mindset the same as seeing the faction destroyed. Hence why Baine's actions are absolutely for the Horde (his ideal Horde) to survive. Derek profits from this of course, but he is not the driving factor.

I agree that honor is a big deal to the orcs and tauren, which is why my main problem with Sylvanas raising these people, as I've said often, isn't so much the out of story morality of it - since this is actually a callous but tactical decision rather than just being a genocidal barking bint, but the fact that there's no way that the orcs, who even when under demon blood were so respectful of the dead that Gul'dan feared they'd off him on the spot if he put his SHadow Council's souls into orcish bodies, had no response. That having been said, this is also aside from the point - the thing Baine took a stand for may make sense for him in-story, but I've argued throughout that he not only worsened the situation, but that within the knowledge that he had at the time, he was mistaken to intervene. That he believes that this is honorable and so forth has no value past in telling us what his motives are, it doesn't make these actions ipso facto virtuous to the audience. Only an assessment of what those actions are can do that.

And in any case, the conflation of orcish honor with tauren honor is highly dubious. The orcs are a far more militant race and the inter-clan variance in what is considered honorable and what isn't is massive, let alone difference in characters. To use my go-to example, Garrosh, Nazgrim, Saurfang and Thrall all talked about honor and had it as the forefront of their thinking, but what that honor entailed and required is massively different. This variance is what gave the race and thus the faction that it's the center of depth, and why the Saurfang dialogue is all well and good for his character, but ruinous for the identity of the faction as it's basically a go-to for it wholesale adopting the beliefs of its opposition.

She was a participant only so she could secretly murder Garrosh (or rather let Vareesa murder him for her) behind her Warchiefs back. You give Baine a lot of flak for his saving Derek behind her back, but if Sylvanas does this stuff herself (while completely disregarding collateral damage mind you, she would have poisoned everyone present Horde or Alliance if necessary) it doesn't seem to count. And it is hardly the first time she subverted her Warchiefs orders to do what she wanted.
Jaina on the other hand had actually made her peace with the Horde at that point and buried her genocidal side and contrary to Garrosh and Sylvanas she actually realized how wrong genocide is and is immensely glad she was stopped.

I don't understand what you're arguing in this bit of paragraphs, because my point was not that everyone there was genocidal - Garrosh never performed any genocide, for instance. It's that the parties who were the participants in his trial were guilty of many of the same things he were or in Sylvanas's case, worse, yet were not put on trial and the trial as a whole was a sham meant to point this out. Is Sylvanas a traitor to the Horde for trying to kill Garrosh at the trial? I mean, sure, since he was overthrown in a coup and was thus still Warchief, so any act against him would be treason - so is the entire Horde. What sets Sylvanas apart from say Baine or Bob, is that while committing treason she at least didn't do it to aid the enemies of the faction during a war. But she's still been in violation of the Blood Oath since Gilneas, something I've pointed out myself often.

As a side note, my point about your assessment of the Forsaken isn't that they aren't evil - they are. It's that the Forsaken being evil doesn't mean that anyone else is a moral paragon, especially not the orcs. It's not that the Forsaken are your blind spot, though they are, it's that your focus on the Forsaken has you ignore the context they exist in and what other races do.

If we are talking about a world with magic, especially with necromancy, then death is a very complicated state. Are people that get battlerezzed by a Death Knight still alive or undead? Are undead actually not alive if they walk around and talk? Is death even a final thing when you go to the Shadowlands and exist there fully concious?

All resurrection can be chalked up as game mechanics for the most part. But undeath does have lore - most undead also still have souls, i.e, when you raise a ghoul you're imperfectly attaching the former soul to the warped body you're bringing back. As for whether death is final given the Shadowlands? In a sense yes, because the only thing that's guaranteed to be preserved is your anima, which is just energy. The Arbiter might decide that your future is to be an ugly ghoul thing in Maldraxxus who gets killed for their weakness and then you enter nonexistence. Kind of sucks, that.

You can disagree on Jaina's willingness to wipe out Orgrimmar and you'd be wrong. Anduin is another case of course. He would try to stop her, but I doubt he would have the same success as Thrall and Kalec, not a second time. She decided during Garrosh's trial that she wanted to not be like him, but she is still just a step away from going fully murderous again. She almost vaporized Baine where he stood when she saw what had been done to Derek, had she stumbled upon Derek that has just killed Kathrin she would have lost it completely. Her resolve is not that strong and her sanity by now is more then a bit fragile.

Answering also @Aucald in this, I would love to agree that Jaina would react to the death of her family with outrage that would have her reject the white peace the Alliance are pushing and gain the realism that she had back in the comic. But I just can't buy it. As said, she already was in line with Anduin's ridiculous goals as of Dazar'alor, to the point of delaying victory in the war to see it through. The second and most crucial point is that this is actually a plan that would have been achieved entirely by Sylvanas - the capacity of forgiveness for these people and their willingness to blame Sylvanas exclusively even for things that the Horde as a whole is culpable in or where she played no real part, is endless. Shuffling three deaths under the rug when you've already shuffled a city's worth and more is easy. Doing so when the plan is likely to fail when Jaina freezes his sorry ass makes this even harder. I'd like to be able to agree and also project that the plan was intended to fail to spur Jaina into killing more Horde since Sylvanas caught on that she's hesitating, so she wants to ensure the gap remains between them, or that such a profound personal loss would shock her back into sense, but the writing doesn't support either.

Inter arma enim silent leges, or "in times of war, the laws fall mute" as Cicero put it. Baine no doubt rankles at the idea of the Horde dead, including his own people, being raised as skeletons by Sylvanas to fight the Alliance - but he's got a number of factors working against him. Firstly and most immediately, they're literally under attack in the heart of their own fortress, a dire situation that does call for extreme measures. Sylvanas' measures not being ideal, but if they're working it's not like he can lodge a formal complaint in the heat of battle. Secondly, Baine is already on Sylvanas' radar in a bad way due to the events of "Before the Storm," so he already needs to tread carefully in light of Sylvanas' implied threat to both him and his people. Thirdly, Baine is keen to preserve is position high in the Horde so as to work to correct the problems from within - he's not going to throw that away lightly, and (rightfully) judges that this is not the time to do that on moral grounds. One thing Baine struggles with as a leader is in the different between ruling with his head and his heart, as it were; and in this case I think he made a good decision to hold back as much as he could, bide his time and wait for the right time to act. You upbraid him for this, just as you do when he act rashly as concerns Taurajo and those he exiled (a decision I also think was foolhardy on his part) - but I think that's a bit hypocritical and probably more a product of your extreme dislike for his character. In your eyes I don't he can do anything good or right at this part. But regardless, I think he was right in this case, and right again to defy Sylvanas and free Derek from bondage and address the corruption of the Forsaken credo itself. I also think the idea of outing Sylvanas to the Horde was a strong part of Baine's actions as well, they didn't all arise from pure and utter altruism - he wanted people to see Sylvanas for what she was, and for many people he got his wish. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, either; as we know now that he was completely right about her, and well vindicated in his beliefs that she was bad for Horde (and bad for all life, as it turned out).

It's true, I do give Baine a lot of shit, but that's usually because he fucks up. I've also given Saurfang endless shit, but I also gave his story and character credit both in AGW and in 8.2.5. Baine, save for that one line at the start about how they can't take the vulpera in because they're already having trouble keeping up, that ends up evidentiary of his ignorance of the continent he was the envoy to for god knows how long as @Reinhart11 says, has simply given me no room.

To answer the quote and the following sentiment though, this is a self-defeating argument. If Baine is to be cut slack because he notes that this is a dire situation requiring brutal tactics even if it means his own people are raised into undeath, violating their most sacred beliefs in the afterlife, and he can cut slack on genocide because it's already passed, then that makes things worse. Why? Because the situation when Derek is raised is both a lesser violation and a far more dire situation for the Horde, with few costs given that as far as anyone knows it's already a total war, yet this is what brings him into action. Baine may have been intended as someone who has trouble keeping a clear head when something 'violates his nature' but that just doesn't jive with how much he's ignored throughout. Baine's action was past the harm that it caused, because, while Sylvanas is responsible for starting the war, she didn't make Baine kill those Horde randos that would later have gone over to his side anyway when she fucked off, also entirely symbolic. He did not change minds or bring about any change to the Horde, nor was his view evidentiary of the Horde as a whole, given that this was a public event that tickets were sold to and everything and yet the sum of those whom it turned were the existing anti-Sylvanas leadership.

[Shampro]

I hope he does take the throne officially so he's dead by 10.0 at the latest.

[Soon-TM]

So one expansion then? I can live with that, especially if he dies in a shameful way with his BF Anduin

Baine maybe, but Anduin? He's too much of an author's pet.

[Arrashi]

Baine maybe, but Anduin? He's too much of an author's pet.

To be fair, baine is andy mirror for the horde. And also one of same authors pets.

[Aucald]

Answering also Aucald in this, I would love to agree that Jaina would react to the death of her family with outrage that would have her reject the white peace the Alliance are pushing and gain the realism that she had back in the comic. But I just can't buy it. As said, she already was in line with Anduin's ridiculous goals as of Dazar'alor, to the point of delaying victory in the war to see it through. The second and most crucial point is that this is actually a plan that would have been achieved entirely by Sylvanas - the capacity of forgiveness for these people and their willingness to blame Sylvanas exclusively even for things that the Horde as a whole is culpable in or where she played no real part, is endless. Shuffling three deaths under the rug when you've already shuffled a city's worth and more is easy. Doing so when the plan is likely to fail when Jaina freezes his sorry ass makes this even harder. I'd like to be able to agree and also project that the plan was intended to fail to spur Jaina into killing more Horde since Sylvanas caught on that she's hesitating, so she wants to ensure the gap remains between them, or that such a profound personal loss would shock her back into sense, but the writing doesn't support either.

I think you read far too much into Jaina's change of heart than what is actually on offer. She softens a bit, sure; but turn her long-lost brother into a brainwashed Forsaken assassin and send him gunning for her and her family? Jaina's not going to take that lying down, especially not after all the shit she's already been through to get where she currently is. She may not go off-the-walls crazy like she did post-Theramore, but regardless, some Horde soldiers are going to die shortly after that goes down on her way to wherever Sylvanas might be found. She's got more than enough power to see it done, and has gone off for less reason in the past.

It's true, I do give Baine a lot of shit, but that's usually because he fucks up. I've also given Saurfang endless shit, but I also gave his story and character credit both in AGW and in 8.2.5. Baine, save for that one line at the start about how they can't take the vulpera in because they're already having trouble keeping up, that ends up evidentiary of his ignorance of the continent he was the envoy to for god knows how long as Reinhart11 says, has simply given me no room.

This is a point in any single-minded dislike or outright hatred where you can't permit a character to be seen in any form of positive light. You'll over-emphasize them when they're at the worst, and recontextualize them into sucking when they're arguably at their best. The inverse is often true for characters people like - they can do not wrong, and when and if they do wrong it's often cause to justify them with obtuse metaphors or ecstatic rationalizations. Baine is flawed without a doubt, and he's done some truly dumb things as a leader - but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, the saying goes. An utter refusal to give Baine *any* possibility of doing the right thing is far from objective.

To answer the quote and the following sentiment though, this is a self-defeating argument. If Baine is to be cut slack because he notes that this is a dire situation requiring brutal tactics even if it means his own people are raised into undeath, violating their most sacred beliefs in the afterlife, and he can cut slack on genocide because it's already passed, then that makes things worse. Why? Because the situation when Derek is raised is both a lesser violation and a far more dire situation for the Horde, with few costs given that as far as anyone knows it's already a total war, yet this is what brings him into action. Baine may have been intended as someone who has trouble keeping a clear head when something 'violates his nature' but that just doesn't jive with how much he's ignored throughout. Baine's action was past the harm that it caused, because, while Sylvanas is responsible for starting the war, she didn't make Baine kill those Horde randos that would later have gone over to his side anyway when she fucked off, also entirely symbolic. He did not change minds or bring about any change to the Horde, nor was his view evidentiary of the Horde as a whole, given that this was a public event that tickets were sold to and everything and yet the sum of those whom it turned were the existing anti-Sylvanas leadership.

Everyone has their breaking point. You are treating each incident as an isolated and completely discrete occurrence, judging them solely on their merit in a vacuum and so insinuating there's no causal link between one occurrence and the next. "Because Baine didn't react to this, or this, then obviously this last thing is too minor to matter." Baine simply reached the limit of what he could allow, after a long time suffering Sylvanas' misdeeds in relative silence. Baine's made little bones of his opposition to Sylvanas and her methods throughout BfA, so we already know he's very critical of her. He doesn't act in light of Teldrassil, doesn't act in light of Lordaeron, bides his time in Zuldazar, but when push finally comes to shove and something comes along where he can act then he does so. That's a good thing, and one totally in keeping with his character. As for his role within the Horde and the very idea of his changing hearts and minds, the very narrative is against you there - with Lor'themar calling him "the Heart of the Horde" and major Horde leaders from Rokhan to Thrall to Lor'themar to Thalyssra falling in with the rebel sentiment and acting either to aid Saurfang in rescuing Baine directly or afterward, sensing that the time to oppose Sylvanas is nigh. Those at the leader summit summit against Sylvanas was circumspect and unsure of it, save for perhaps Mayla and Rexxar; but Baine's action galvanizes them and does much to lead to the later movement against Sylvanas when Saurfang returns to the Horde proper.

[My User Name]

Shit

Rest in peace my Warchief zappy boi dream